Provenance:

Private Collection, Ontario

Note:

InFlight of The Shaman, Jessie Oonark depicts a shaman bedecked with their attendant spirits. The figure appears in outline, arms swept backwards as the wings of a bird.

In The Coming and Going of the Shaman: Eskimo Shamanism and Art, author and curator Jean Blodgett describes the powers of the Inuk shaman to take flight as follows:

Shamans could fly to the moon, to the sun, to the heavens, and to the underworld. They visited deities above the earth and below the sea. They flew or descended to the bottom of lakes and to the lands of the dead, both in the sky and underground. They might fly through space or around the earth. They were transported by spirit helpers and benign deities. They also traveled from one earthly locale to another; from Canada to Point Barrow, from the Diomede Islands to St. Lawrence Islands, or even from Alaska to San Francisco and back.[1]

Shamanic imagery appears in works from throughout Oonark’s career. Although Oonark was reticent to speak publicly on matters pertaining to the spiritual realm, her father and grandfather were said to have been shamans.[2]

[1] Jean Blodgett, The Coming and Going of the Shaman: Eskimo Shamanism and Art (Winnipeg: The Winnipeg Gallery of Art, 1978), 91.
[2] Jean Blodgett and Marie Bouchard, Jessie Oonark: A Retrospective (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1986), 65.